The Angel

by Uri Bar-Joseph

  But the war also brought about a shift in the relationship. Part of it was personal. Egypt’s great successes in the first few days of the war, especially raising the Egyptian flag over the Bar-Lev Line, gave the Arabs back much of their lost honor in the wake of 1967. Part of Marwan’s original motivation to spy for Israel came from his innate desire to be on the winning side of the conflict. In his meetings with his handlers immediately after the war, he expressed his frustration that Israel had been surprised despite his warnings and that the IDF had taken heavy losses without making effective use of the detailed plans he had provided. Suddenly, the Israelis were no longer the perfect, indomitable force that they once were, and the Egyptians were no longer the humiliated bums that he had been loath to ally himself with.

  Other aspects of his original motivation had been undermined as well. He was now a wealthy man, and the payments he received from the Mossad no longer meant what they once did. And he also had received great honor from the Egyptian government and continued to be welcomed in capitals all over the world, soothing the wounds to his ego that his father-in-law had inflicted—wounds that had surely contributed to his initial decision to betray his country.

  Another change had to do with the shifting relations between Israel and Egypt. The end of the war, the armistice agreements, and Egypt’s shift from the Soviet to the American camp, opened the doors to a genuine peace process, and the likelihood of a new war initiated by Egypt had lessened considerably. As a result, the Angel’s most important role as far as the Mossad was concerned—to sound the alarm if Egypt were about to attack—was no longer nearly as important.

  Yet despite this, Marwan still continued giving Israel crucial ongoing intelligence on Egyptian foreign policy. Beginning in the mid-1970s, he repeated a single message to his Israeli handlers: that Sadat was looking to end the conflict with Israel and instead focus on “building Egypt.” But the president’s thoughts about peace concerned the Mossad and the rest of the Israeli intelligence community far less than did his thoughts about war. And so, the intelligence Marwan delivered garnered far less attention among Israeli decision makers than it had in the past. After Sadat launched the peace process, and especially after the Camp David Accords were signed, Egypt was suddenly a far lower priority for the intelligence community—and so was Ashraf Marwan.

  Marwan’s dwindling stature in Israel was also reflected in a drop in the caution Israelis were exercising with his intelligence. A CIA friend warned him one day that information only he knew was somehow getting to the Israelis—suggesting that the Israelis had neglected their long-standing practice of “paraphrasing” Marwan’s intelligence in a way that made it impossible to know who the source had been before passing it to the Americans. Marwan complained bitterly to Dubi. An inquiry was made, the cause of the slip identified, and steps taken to ensure it didn’t happen again. But clearly keeping Marwan a secret no longer held the same urgency for Israelis as it once did.

  There were other indicators as well. Zamir finished his tour as chief of the Mossad in the summer of 1974. His replacement, Maj. Gen. (res.) Yitzhak Hofi, did not see a need to participate in Marwan’s handling, and Dubi became the Mossad’s only direct link with him. Their meetings also became less frequent. If prior to the war they would meet at least twice a month, and sometimes more, now they met only once every month or two. In the mid-1970s, Dubi left London and relocated back to Israel. Now he could no longer meet Marwan without notice whenever the Angel came to town. This, too, would never have happened when Marwan’s importance for the Mossad was at its peak.

  Even Marwan’s payments were scaled back. Around the Yom Kippur War, his occasional payments reached $50,000 apiece. After the war, he received a fixed annual sum of $100,000—far less than before. Not that he really needed the money. Indeed, at one point he informed his handlers that he no longer wanted compensation at all, and for a number of years he continued to supply information without receiving payment. In the late 1970s, however, he fell on hard financial times and asked for help from the Mossad. Hofi agreed to forward him a onetime payment of over half a million dollars for all the years he had continued supplying information for free. That was the last time the Angel received any money from Israeli taxpayers.

  All this brings to the surface, again, the question of Marwan’s motives. Why would he continue to work for Israel for years, at considerable risk to his career and life, even after 1981, when he would leave Egypt for good? It clearly wasn’t the money. It wasn’t about his personal honor in Egypt; he had kept on helping Israel even when he was at the height of his glory. Nor was he coerced: We have no reason to believe that the Mossad ever attempted to get Marwan to do anything against his will.

  Only one conclusion makes any sense. His role as a spy fulfilled some need, and he was reluctant to give it up. Perhaps it was the excitement and risk inherent in espionage. Once he had tasted it, going back to “normal” life was no longer an option. Somewhere in the recesses of his soul, he had a Hollywood-inspired passion for the life of a spy. At a certain stage he came to believe that if he stopped working for Israel, the Mossad would try to kill him. Exactly why he believed this is far from clear. But he continued to fear their vengeance many years later. Finally, part of the motivation may have had to do with a very special relationship he developed with Dubi, whom he still knew only as “Alex.” Even someone as crafty and deceitful as Marwan needed somebody, somewhere, in whom he could confide, someone steadfast. Dubi was the only person on earth who could provide this, and their meetings became a kind of confessional for Marwan. Everybody, even the darkest criminals, needs a confessional. That is why he refused, repeatedly, the Mossad’s efforts to replace Dubi with a different handler or even to add a second one.

  The only occasion when Zamir’s successor agreed to meet with Marwan was in order to convince him to agree to a second handler. Hofi explained that the new handler would stand in for “Alex” only when the latter was ill or unavailable for personal reasons. But Marwan was adamant that any effort to add anyone else to his operation would result in the Israelis’ never seeing him again. Hofi capitulated, and Dubi continued to be Marwan’s sole handler for years to come.

  EVEN AFTER MARWAN left public life, he never left the public eye. Sensing that he no longer had the president’s backing, the Egyptian press went after him like sharks after blood, publishing endless reports, true or false, of his corrupt real estate dealings or wild exaggerations about his wealth. They reached their peak in 1981, when the businessman Osman Ahmed Osman published his memoir in Egypt. He was close with Sadat, even marrying off his eldest son to Sadat’s daughter. In the book, Osman attacked Nasser’s policies but also claimed that Ashraf Marwan and his wife, Mona, accumulated 400 million Egyptian pounds by illicitly taking advantage of their status as family members of the revered leader. Painting himself as defender of the Nasser family, Marwan flatly denied Osman’s accusations. “If only God were to grant me a few hundred years to live,” he added, “could I struggle to earn one percent of that amount.” Marwan’s efforts to debunk Osman’s claims, as well as those that Musa Sabri published in Akhbar al-Youm, were futile. A rare and detailed interview conducted with Marwan for the paper was never run, despite Marwan’s repeated pleas for Sabri to publish it.37

  At the same time, and in spite of everything, Marwan continued carrying on an informal relationship with Anwar and Jehan Sadat. He was seen more than once in their home, updating the president about various meetings he had held in the Arab world. On other occasions he accompanied Sadat on trips abroad. Part of this was due to the fact that Sadat clearly had a soft spot for Mona; according to some, he saw in himself a kind of father figure for her, perhaps because of the estrangement between her and the rest of Nasser’s family. Ashraf certainly gained from the continued connection, if for no other reason than that it showed the world that he had not fully lost his influence. Dismayed that the connection between Sadat and Marwan had not been fully severed, Marwan’s rivals feared t
hat he might, one day, return to the political stage. And so they saw to it that articles attacking Marwan continued to appear in the press.38

  Whether or not their fears were legitimate, the possibility of Marwan’s return evaporated completely on October 6, 1981, when Sadat was gunned down during a military parade marking the eighth anniversary of the October War. Sadat, who had protected Marwan, promoted him, needed him, and never fully lost faith in him, was gone. He was replaced by Hosni Mubarak, neither rival nor friend. For Ashraf Marwan, a man whose thirst for wealth, honor, and success could never be fully slaked, Cairo had little to offer. He continued to keep a home there and spent quite a bit of time there, usually with his family. He did not neglect his business affairs in Egypt, especially in real estate. But Sadat’s passing was, for him, a signal to begin again, to start a new chapter in his story. Soon after Mubarak was sworn in, Ashraf Marwan moved to London, which became the center of his new life.

  Chapter 12

  AN ANGEL IN THE CITY, A SON-IN-LAW EXPOSED

  England was not a foreign country for Ashraf Marwan when he moved there in 1981. London had been something of a second home for him ever since he first visited to pursue his master’s degree in the late 1960s. For him it was a place of refuge, a vacation hub, and the base of operations for a number of his businesses. Of course, it was also the center of his life as a spy.

  Yet despite his love for London, he did not immediately bring his family along. Mona and the children, now on the brink of adolescence, moved into a posh Paris flat that Marwan bought them on Avenue Foch, in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the world, which counted the Rothschild and Onassis families among its residents. For the first few years, Marwan saw his family mainly on weekends.

  The ensuing quarter century of Marwan’s life was dedicated to building his wealth. Like other aspects of his life, this, too, remains shrouded in mystery and conflicting accounts. Even people closely familiar with the London business scene have a hard time explaining how Marwan made his money and how much he made. Part of it has to do with the character of the man and his dealings. But it also has to do with the culture of “the City,” as the financial core of London is known, a culture that until the 1980s handled itself according to a strict code based on collegiality, discretion, restraint, and tradition—in contrast to the American business world with its excessive legalism and emphasis on hardball competition, rapid growth, and jostling for control at almost any price. The London business culture was, at its heart, aristocratic, in many ways reminiscent of cricket, a game where ineffables were no less important than rules. This meant, however, that until recently there was very little of what is today called “transparency.” Little was overseen by government, little known about what went down, because it was understood that the London business scene would keep its own tabs through its set of unwritten rules no less strict than the law itself.

  Marwan was not part of this gentlemen’s club. Even if he owned an apartment in the most luxurious part of town, even if he was driven around in a stretch limousine, he remained an outsider in the City. He had never attended the right boarding schools, but he knew full well how closed a world it was, with its clear share of racism as well. And so, when he did make his connections in the City, it was mainly with other outsiders like himself—people who, by virtue of being outcasts, felt no need to follow the unspoken rules of the game. This fact, while offering them both the limitations and the opportunities that others lacked, also makes it all the harder to reconstruct their moves decades later.

  Marwan’s first main link to the London business world was established before he left Egypt. In 1979 he purchased 40 percent of a small air-shipping company called Tradewinds. Founded in 1969, the company was sold in 1978 to one of the biggest concerns in Britain at the time, the London and Rhodesian Mining and Land Company, or Lonrho. The chairman of Lonrho was the British tycoon Roland “Tiny” Rowland—to whom Marwan had been introduced back in 1971 by his close friends Abdullah al-Sabah and his wife, Souad. Another connection was Subhi Rushdie, the chairman of the Allied Arab Bank. The connection with Rowland became the core of his London business operations until Rowland’s death in 1998.

  Rowland and Marwan first met in 1970, when the former came to Cairo to inquire about Egyptian cotton. Introduced to Marwan by Sadat, Rowland was taken by the young Egyptian’s connections throughout the Arab world, and the sense that Marwan knew how to get him anything he needed to advance his interests. The two quickly hit it off, based in part on their similar approaches to business reflecting their similar life stories. Both shared a limitless thirst for money and power, an extreme egocentrism, and a need for honor and the taking of risk. They both knew how to identify and take advantage of the weaknesses of others. They were both born outside of the UK (Rowland in a detention camp in India where his parents, Dutch-German nationals, were held by the British during World War I), and both were outsiders to the City who flouted its rules. Rowland, for example, offered to Sir Angus Ogilvy, who had previously owned Lonrho and was married to the queen’s first cousin, that he join the company’s board of directors. They agreed that certain remunerations that Ogilvy received would be transferred to a Swiss bank account, routed via Canada, so that Ogilvy could avoid paying taxes. From Rowland’s standpoint, the whole point of this illegal transaction was to make sure that Ogilvy faithfully represented his interests on the board. But when it came to light that the company had violated British-imposed sanctions on the white regime of Rhodesia, the entire board, including Ogilvy, voted against Rowland. In response, Rowland leaked Ogilvy’s tax evasion to the press—a shocking violation of the accepted code of conduct in the City, causing embarrassment not only to Ogilvy but to the royal family, which in turn made Rowland himself into a pariah among the British aristocrats.1 Indeed, neither Rowland nor Marwan was a big fan of the rule of law. They had no problem either giving or taking bribes, making threats, or conducting business in flagrant violation of the law. So when Marwan moved to London after finding himself an outcast in Cairo, the two found each other to be convenient company.

  It was at a luncheon meeting the two shared at the Ritz on May 10, 1983, that Marwan involved himself in what would eventually become the most controversial business scandal in the City’s modern history. The affair centered around Rowland’s effort to commandeer the House of Fraser, and would likely have been much less of a scandal if not for the fact that the House of Fraser was the parent company for the Harrods department store, which was the favorite shopping venue for the British elites—including the royals.

  Tiny Rowland first tried taking over the House of Fraser in 1977. He took advantage of the difficult financial straits of its owner and chairman, Hugh Fraser, which had resulted from the latter’s gambling debts, in order to buy via a number of channels 29.9 percent of the company. At that point the chain included sixty-two stores, most of which were in a bad way. After Lonrho took a few more steps that indicated its intention to take over the company, the British authorities got involved, specifically the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, which decided to open an inquiry as to whether such a bid would put the public interests at risk. In March 1981, the commission concluded that while a merger between the two companies did not inherently pose such a risk, a takeover of Fraser by Lonrho would.2

  Not long passed, however, before Rowland successfully engineered the ouster of Hugh Fraser from the position of chairman and resumed his takeover bid. This time he simultaneously made an offer to purchase the Observer. The Thatcher government approved the purchase of the newspaper but not a takeover of Fraser, and because they were by now used to Rowland’s antics, the trade minister ruled that Lonrho may not purchase any further shares in the House of Fraser. While the formal reason given for this was that Lonrho already owned a textile factory and that its purchase of the House of Fraser might unfairly discriminate against other manufacturers, everyone knew that the real reason had more to do with the reluctance of the British elites to allow the c
ountry’s greatest chain store, patronized by princes, to fall into the hands of someone as disreputable as Tiny Rowland. His support for the regime in Rhodesia, coupled with extensive questionable dealings across Africa and the damage he had caused the royal family in the Ogilvy affair, created a sense that was summed up by Prime Minister Edward Heath, several years earlier, when he called Rowland and Lonrho “the unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism.”

  Rowland was far from deterred. Though he agreed not to buy any more shares of Fraser, even making a public announcement to that effect in September 1982, it was but a diversion. His next move was to find more clever use of his nearly 30 percent stake to convince shareholders to sell off Harrods, enabling him to buy control of the rest of the company. When efforts to persuade the other shareholders failed, he decided he would do everything he could to gain hold of a majority stake before the next meeting of the board of directors—in clear violation of the Trade Ministry’s ruling. To make this happen, he needed the help of Ashraf Marwan.

  A few days after their lunch at the Ritz, Marwan bought two million shares of the House of Fraser, and then another 1.2 million. Rowland helped Marwan fund the purchase. All told, by mid-June 1983, Marwan held about 2 percent of the company. At the same time, other people connected with Rowland made similar purchases. By the time of the board meeting, Rowland had enough shares under his belt to pass a vote in favor of selling off the department stores. And yet, it was thwarted by various technical bylaws that opponents of the move had managed to pass.